Community of Giving

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This story is from the 2025 issue of Discoveries, a UC San Diego Health Sciences magazine.

With the generosity of donors and community friends, UC San Diego Health Sciences is at the forefront of providing world-class health care for patients in addition to sparking medical research discoveries that transform lives worldwide.

Private support drives novel research and health care to benefit all.

Honoring Joan Jacobs

In 2024, UC San Diego lost an incredible supporter and friend, Joan Jacobs. She left a legacy that has a vast, positive impact on the campus, region and around the world. With her husband, Irwin Jacobs, Joan received the prestigious Chancellor’s Medal in 2010 and the inaugural UC San Diego Lifetime Legacy Award in 2020 for their incredible support of the university.

Joan and Irwin Jacobs donated $100 million to establish the Jacobs Medical Center at UC San Diego Health, which opened in 2016. It was there that Joan also established the Joan Klein Jacobs Healing Arts Collection to introduce art and healing throughout the facility.

Advancing the facility even further, Joan and Irwin Jacobs recently donated $22 million for the Center for Health Innovation at UC San Diego Health. The patient care “mission control center” within Jacobs Medical Center serves as a hyper-connected hub to monitor patient health and safety with the goal of developing AI algorithms and models that improve personalized treatment, health equity and patient experience. The couple also established the Jacobs Retina Center at Shiley Eye Institute to drive research into solutions for retina disorders, which affect patients of all ages.

In honor of Joan’s memory, Irwin Jacobs recently designated $6 million to establish three endowed chairs in Health Sciences, including the Joan Klein Jacobs Endowed Chair in Surgery, the Joan Klein Jacobs Endowed Chair in Cardiology and the Joan Klein Jacobs Endowed Chair in Neurology.

McGrath Outpatient Pavilion

The Hillcrest Medical Campus at UC San Diego Health will soon be home to the McGrath Outpatient Pavilion, thanks to a $25 million gift from the McGrath Family Foundation.

Slated to open in summer of 2025, the six-floor, 250,000-square-foot McGrath Outpatient Pavilion will house specialty clinical programs, including oncology, neurosurgery, urology, ear, nose and throat, orthopedics and other specialties, as well as outpatient surgery operating rooms, endoscopy procedure rooms, advanced imaging, infusion and radiation oncology.

“We value the outstanding medical services that UC San Diego provides to the community,” said Laurie McGrath, president of the McGrath Family Foundation. “We are very excited to be a part of the revitalization of the UC San Diego Medical Center in Hillcrest, which we know will benefit patients and their families throughout the region.”

A Match for Cardiomyopathy

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is characterized by a thickening of the muscles in the heart and can disrupt the heart’s electrical rhythm, causing sudden death. Often undiagnosed, it is estimated that as many as 1 in 200 people in the U.S. have the disease.

With a personal connection to cardiomyopathy, Steven M. Strauss and Lise N. Wilson established the region’s first dedicated center for the condition, the Steven M. Strauss and Lise N. Wilson Cardiomyopathy Center. The couple donated $3.25 million for the center in 2021 and created a match to raise an additional $1.75 million — which was successfully met in late 2023 — for a total of $5 million for the center.

The center focuses on finding better ways to diagnose and treat cardiomyopathy, led by Eric Adler, MD, professor of medicine, director of the Strauss Wilson Cardiomyopathy Center and the Czarina and Humberto S. Lopez Chancellor’s Endowed Chair in Cardiology at UC San Diego School of Medicine, and section head of heart failure at UC San Diego Health.

Giving Babies the Best Start

The Human Milk Institute (HMI) at UC San Diego is on the forefront of global research dedicated to better understanding the nature, biology and public health implications of breastfeeding and human milk.

A $1 million gift established an endowment to support the annual HMI symposium, which brings together some of the world’s leading breastfeeding and human milk experts for knowledge exchange, strategic planning and visioning.

In recognition of the gift, the annual event has been named the Kohlberg Johnson Family Human Milk Institute Symposium. The gift will provide funding, in perpetuity, to help cover costs related to the symposium and to ensure that registration fees remain low and accessible for all those who wish to attend, including interested individuals from the community.

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